Watch This Space

This space is being reconfigured and started up for NaPoWriMo starting on April Fool's Day!

Foundling

Foundling

"Renunciation... is a piercing virtue."
Emily Dickinson

But to be the one renounced
In name of virtue--that's a bad joke,
A taste in the mouth like last night's garlic.
Sweat it out. Comes the pain without the honor,
Like the martyr soldier's horse!
Insult to fibers moral and connective--
Do I shame you? So I do. --
Contamination borne in the blood.
Your secret's showing, not to be
Spoken. Hushed, refused, this applecart
Upsetter, homewerecker, mark of sin.
The hills above the city are scarred with infants' bones.

To the Muse

To the Muse

It isn't about men leaving.
Not my brother's gun.
I feel like shit
Most of the time
Thinking I forgive you but I don't
Understand you.
Only in the bad times,
The worst places, I find you in me.
Black juice of joy rant and storm
Surge of pain; this is the blood spring vital.

Your ghost screams in pain.
I can't believe I wrote that.
Your ghost screams in pain.
Biting itself, shredding its tongue,
Shredding its ghostly arms
With nightmare claws. Wake up now.
I'm writing this for you.
Everything is for you, these forget-me-nots,
These chocolates, this glass of gin, this rage.
The car run into a snowdrift, bottles of pills,
My crimes, my sacred enemies, lockdown
Ward two west and meds call.
What have I not given, endured?
I am faithfully yours.

Off to Provincetown

The Woodsman and I are off to Provincetown early tomorrow morning. My workshop is full and I have two manuscript conferences and a reading. This is my vacation. Actually, I should call it my "vacation from my vacation" since the whole summer is so lovely here.

When I return I will have my first two Vermont College packets waiting in the mail, and it really will be time to get to work. How can my book orders for Fall already be late? Why are students emailing me in July?

Full moon tomorrow--I hope it's clear over the harbor!

What shall I bring you all from the beach?

Part three of FREE BOOKS

Ask and you shall receive:

Creating True Prosperity, Shakti Gawain
Adobe Odes, Pat Mora

Faith

What world do you believe, which weather?
An overcast day shows the plainness of things,
like roof, chimney, stark. The river
under the highway, brown, choked with grass
standing in mud, and the car behind
pressing up, pushing for speed. Gentle lights of trucks
you have followed as guides in fog and snow,
steady, nosing forward like mastadons
wakened at dusk from their long sleep to reassure us
being leaves an imprint, all forms held
in the memory of mud enfolding time.
It's dusk, you know this road. You don't know
which world this is today, whether that black dog
regarding you from a doorstep is the buddha
or guardian of thieves, or just a black dog,
or if their is any difference really.
How can we say there were angels present at the creation
if there are no angels now? Every question
ends in unknowing, the vastest place,
ample and newly unrecognized,
though you believe you are following
a familiar road, going home at dusk.

Untitled

Now I am calling to my old loves,
asking them to help me remember myself, to redeem
whatever compromise we traded for joy.
It is not too late to remember and turn.
I live alone and a bird comes to my window.
I lie on the grass and the wind plays with my hair.
And if I don't feel a man's weight on my body
again, I won't stop wanting, reaching to taste.
Did you think you could shut up desire,
forget love for the world's body
and still be alive, that it would ever stop
hurting to desire? How many places
have we been lost, running from one another?
I lie in my bed, with the stove squatting black
in the corner, windows painted over with night,
silence of night overhead, then some curious
creature moving in the leaves, in its life,
and I listen. In memory, a small "oh"
when his hand finds the wet place, yielding
to open, breath catches, catches me up.
I won't tie up my hair, bolt the door, or stop
calling into the dark because there is a heart there
still answering, however it seems to have moved on,
however I seem to lie alone, each love in me
more alive. From many, one.